9 ms·

> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE > No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thi

> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE > No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. Public spaces are defined by being public, in that everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting. So in reality, everyone has permitted themselves to be surveilled, purely through the act of being in public. This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.

gowld 8mo ago
Flock is not a natural person. Flock has no rights.
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  Companies have plenty of rights in the US.
- TacticalCoder 8mo ago
  As the owner of a moral person (a company), I disagree. There are even weirder stuff than companies being considered a "moral person". For example if a person speeds way too much in France (say more than 50 kilometers/hour above the speed limit on the highway, e.g. 180 km/h // 111 mph instead of the 130 km/h // 80 mph)... Well then that person gets arrested. And his driving license is confiscated on the spot. But here's the absolute crazy thing: even if the car belong to someone else, to a company, to a rental company... Doesn't matter: the French state consider that the car itself was complicit in the act. So the car is seized too (for 8 days if it doesn't belong to the person who was driving it and potentially much more if it does belong to the person driving it). Companies are persons and cars (I'm not even talking about self-driving cars) have rights and obligations. That's the world we live in.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8mo ago
    "Company" is a generic collective noun. "Corporation" is the legal term directly referencing a constructed singular entity with a corpus/body to be treated like a natural person.
ceejayoz 8mo ago
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. The idea that there's not a scale difference is, quite frankly, bogus.
- AnIrishDuck 8mo ago
  > This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you from a park bench in public and hundreds of thousands of clones of me watching you from every street corner in public is, quite frankly, bogus To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own.
  - CamperBob2 8mo ago
    To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own. The central dogma of machine learning. Which Flock and its defenders know very well.
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  Okay, can you articulate the difference? I don't disagree that quantity has a quality of it's own in some circumstances, but that's not an inherent property of "quantity".
  - ceejayoz 8mo ago
    You peeking out your curtains at me is fine. It doesn’t scale. Everyone doing it 24/7 via their cameras and running it through AI analysis and providing it to the cops for $$$ is not.
    - try_the_bass 8mo ago
      What if I run my own cameras, my own local models, and my own analysis? All from the privacy of my own home... Is that okay? What if I recruit a few friends around my town to do the same, and we share data and findings? Is that also fine? What if I pay a bunch of people I don't know to collect this data for me, but do all the analysis myself? Where do you draw the line? Being able to concretely define a line here is something I've seen privacy proponents be utterly incapable of doing. Yet it's important to do so, because on one end of the spectrum is a set of protected liberties, and on the other is authoritarian dystopia. If you can't define some point at which freedom stops being freedom, you leave the door wide open to the kind of bullshit arguments we see any time "privacy in public" comes up: 100% feels, and 0% logic.
8note 8mo ago
this is still forcing flock on everyone. they could instead be limiting flock to private places. > This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. if you followed me everywhere and took pictures of me everywhwre i went outside from my door in the morning to my door in the evening, id want to get a restraining order on you as a stalker. this is stalking
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  I agree, this is stalking. But again, this is not what Flock is doing. By this same logic, traffic cameras and CCTV surveillance are "stalking", which doesn't seem accurate?
  - jmye 8mo ago
    The idea that a single CCTV feed is at all comparable to aggregatable Flock data is a deeply unserious position. I’m not clear why you think you can pretend that single cameras and a network of cameras are either similar or comparable, in this context? Or why traffic cameras aren’t essentially identical, if they’re used identically? I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt, but it feels very sea-liony and intentionally disingenuous.
    - try_the_bass 8mo ago
      [flagged]
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    It's accurate, they are stalking
  - toss1 8mo ago
    Scenario A: A person or drone follows you and takes a sequence of photos of your activities (approximately) wherever you go in public. Scenario B: An array of cameras is installed (approximately) everywhere and takes a series of photos that include you, and the sequence of photos of your activities (approximately) wherever you go in public is assembled in real-time. You claim these are different. Other than details of the the technology, they are the same. The result is the stalker has a complete surveillance of your activities. Scenario B is even worse, as the stalker now has a complete surveillance of EVERYONE, for the same cost, with zero regard for legitimate legal suspicion. Stop being pedantic and ignoring reality
breakpointalpha 8mo ago
I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America. If this is what they thought was possible, why write the 4th Amendment? Unreasonable search and overbearing government was one of the key issues of the American Revolution.
- AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
  > I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America. They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety - Ben Frank Iirc he was a founder
  - wredcoll 8mo ago
    Sorry, which part of the facial recognition cameras is liberty?
    - direwolf20 8mo ago
      The part where you have the liberty to deploy your own network of them
      - wredcoll 8mo ago
        Just like how it's equally illegal for the rich or poor to sleep under a bridge
        direwolf20 8mo ago
        Was the Flock guy rich before he did Flock?
  - try_the_bass 8mo ago
    I know this is supposed to be some kind of "gotcha", but I'm legitimately curious: what essential liberty is someone giving up being surveilled in public?
dogleash 8mo ago
>> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE >> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled > As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. You're agreeing that he is forcing flock on people. Legality doesn't make it not-forced. Not needing consent is different from receiving consent.
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  I mean, he's not. Police departments and other organizations who buy and install Flock cameras are the ones doing the "forcing". Again, I'm pretty anti-Flock, but place the blame where it's due and use good logic to support that.
  - incompatible 8mo ago
    But Flock is happy to see them installed that way. They are collaborating and all responsible.
    - try_the_bass 8mo ago
      I don't understand this argument. How is Flock "collaborating" by selling their product? Sure they're happy their product is selling. How does that imply collaboration? I mean, you're welcome to buy an Apple Vision Pro, but you making poor decisions with your money doesn't make Apple responsible for that.
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    When a government department takes down Flock cameras why does Flock put new ones up?
    - try_the_bass 8mo ago
      I mean, that's a really good question. Do you have an answer? I certainly don't
phil21 8mo ago
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. If you followed me around all day taking photographs of my every move for no other reason than you felt like it, I would very likely have recourse via stalking and harassment laws. There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology. If I'm interesting enough to get a warrant for surveillance of my activities - fair game. Private investigators operate under a set of reasonable limits and must be licensed in most (all?) states for this reason as well. It's quite obvious laws have simply not caught up with the state of modern technology that allows for the type of data collection and thus mass-surveillance that is now possible today. If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  But Flock doesn't "follow you around"? It's fixed location cameras. If you avoid the locations, you avoid the cameras, and thus the tracking. > There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology. I feel like it's telling that no one has yet taken this logic to court. I think that means that while there may be no difference to you there is a difference according to the law. This gets at your later point. Speaking of: > If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment. I think you're doing a subtle motte-and-bailey here. As far as I'm aware, Flock has strict retention policies, numbering in the low single-digit months (Google says 30 days "by default"). There is no "recorded indefinitely" here, which significantly changes the characteristics of the argument here. This is roughly on par with CCTV systems, to the best of my knowledge. I don't disagree that laws haven't caught up yet, but I also think a lot of the arguments against Flock are rife with hyperbolic arguments like this that do meaningfully misrepresent their model. I think this leads to bad solutioning, as a consequence. I'd much rather have good solutions here than bad ones, because ALPRs and other "surveillance technologies" do drive improvements in crime clearance rates/outcomes, so they shouldn't be banned--just better controlled/audited/overseen
praptak 8mo ago
There's a ton of difference between a random person noting my presence at a single point in space-time and a commercial entity tracking and storing my movements all the time. Being okay with people watching me in public does not imply being okay with someone aggregating the information about my whereabouts 24/7 even though it's "the same" information. Btw it's a fallacy similar to the one debunked in "what colour are your bits". The context matters, not just the abstract information.
- mlyle 8mo ago
  This is an unfortunate thing about a whole lot of legal precedent in the US. Courts made a pretty reasonable set of tradeoffs around the 4th amendment for search warrant vs. subpoena, police officers observing you, etc. During the 19th century. Unfortunately, modern data processing completely undermines a lot of the rationale about how reasonable and intrusive various things are. Before, cops couldn't follow and surveil everyone; blanket subpoenas to get millions of peoples' information weren't possible because the information wasn't concentrated in one entity's hands and compliance would have been impossible; etc.
  - mrguyorama 8mo ago
    Actually the courts of the US have stated that mass dragnet surveillance is not allowed. I can't find the argument I'm thinking of but it referenced how the police can sit outside your house and surveil you, but physically cannot do that to everyone all the time, and that is an inherent limit to their ability to conduct surveillance that gives you some freedoms and that limit should be respected. Making a machine that can do exactly that is not something cops are allowed to do. The actual legal problem is that, the above does not apply to private companies. You have no fourth amendment rights from private companies. The constitution gives you no rights against companies. So the company does exactly what the police aren't allowed to do, and then sell access to the police. For some reason, this literal circumvention of their restrictions has been explicitly allowed. This is why Surveillance Capitalism is such a big deal. It is a direct circumvention of your explicit constitutional rights, and it just so happens to accomplish that because of the profit earned in the process. For a lot of assholes, this is the winingest of win-wins.
xnyan 8mo ago
>This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith. You can make an ideological argument that is the case, but not one based on fact and reality. *edited for spelling
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  > The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith. I mean, in both cases, I'm being observed in public, with unknown intent. Until that observation becomes action of some kind, there is no difference to me. That tells me it's the concrete result of the surveillance that makes the difference, not whether or not it's an individual or a government doing the surveillance. As far as I can tell, if no one searches for my vehicle in Flock's database within 30 days of being observed, whether or not Flock observed me becomes moot. For the vast majority of individuals observed by Flock, there will not exist any permanent record of their movements. Now, all that is assuming they're above board with their retention policies, which they may well not be! I trust them about as far as I can throw them, but I haven't seen any evidence that they're lying about their retention practices, or that they're engaging in "dragnet-style" surveillance. I'm optimistic that any lawfare they engage in will out any bad behavior in that regard, thanks to discovery. This does pose an interesting question: is an individual with perfect memory, who regularly sees you in public and who could recall every detail of every time they've ever seen you, better or worse than Flock, which "forgets" you after 30 days?
xboxnolifes 8mo ago
> There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. > This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. Might I interest you in the concepts of stalking and restraining orders?
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  I'd be curious if one could file a restraining order against Flock, and if that would actually be enforceable? I mean, it might be a viable way to push back against them.
uywykjdskn 8mo ago
[dead]
bccdee 8mo ago
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is bogus Okay: Just how long would you permit someone to follow you around with a camera, recording everything you do? The thing about a stranger watching you in public is that eventually you go somewhere else, and they can't watch you anymore. A surveillance organization like Flock, however, is waiting for you wherever you go. In this sense they're much more like a stalker following you around than a stranger who happens to see you. This analogy bears out in practice: Cops have used Flock data to stalk their exes.¹ [1]: https://www.kwch.com/2022/10/31/kechi-police-lieutenant-arrested-using-police-technology-stalk-wife/ https://www.kwch.com/2022/10/31/kechi-police-lieutenant-arre...
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  > Okay: Just how long would you permit someone to follow you around with a camera, recording everything you do? Probably not long. I might also make it clear I'm not a fan, but at the end of the day, they're generally within their rights to record me in public. Sucks, but not much I can do. > The thing about a stranger watching you in public is that eventually you go somewhere else, and they can't watch you anymore. A surveillance organization like Flock, however, is waiting for you wherever you go. In this sense they're much more like a stalker following you around than a stranger who happens to see you. I mean, I don't buy this argument, because a stranger can legally follow me to all the same places where Flock is present. I mean, surely if I get into a car and drive away, they can get into a car and follow me. So long as we're both in public roads, they're within their rights to do so? Granted, if they keep it up long enough, I can probably file charges for stalking. Perhaps the same can be done against Flock? Hell, this would even be a situation where Flock would be useful: proving that someone was following me around all day, thus supporting my bid for a restraining order or something. > This analogy bears out in practice: Cops have used Flock data to stalk their exes.¹ Indeed, and this is where oversight, strict rules around usage and retention, and effective penalties for violations are needed. Banning Flock is not the only solution! I mean, I would be in favor of banning Flock specifically (because they've demonstrated a willingness to act in bad faith), but I would not support a ban of ALPRs entirely. They do provide benefits, and coupled with the right rules, can be a net benefit to society.
toss1 8mo ago
>>everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting If you want to manually observe me in public, as in WITH A HUMAN PERSON'S LIVING EYEBALLS, go right ahead. Even if you want to use a manually-operated still or video camera and microphone, one device per person, go ahead. Or even a radar gun operated by a human, one observer with one device. But if you start littering the entire planet with cameras and create a panopticon, even if it is absolutely in public space, that is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, and absolutely infringing on any reasonable concept of public/private space! Consider simple speeding. An ordinary person who usually follows speed limits will rarely get stopped and fined, even if they occasionally exceed a limit in an emergency or when doing the safest thing in dense traffic that is over the speed limit, match the speed of traffic. But with universal surveillance, even watching 100% in public spaces, that person in an emergency could get dozens of tickets for minor infractions. This is setting up Cardinal Richlieu's ideal tyranny: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." With a panopticon of all public spaces, any petty tyrant can find enough evidence in six minutes to imprison anyone. [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  > This is setting up Cardinal Richlieu's ideal tyranny: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." It's a good thing, then, that most criminal convictions require a jury of our peers, and not just the word of a tyrant. And that appeals exist, etc etc. > With a panopticon of all public spaces, any petty tyrant can find enough evidence in six minutes to imprison anyone. This is a blatant strawman. Said "panopticon" already exists in major areas, and this kind of abuse of power still rarely happens. It's possible to have increased surveillance come with stricter rules and increased oversight, you know. For example, it's pretty telling that Mandani, largely seen as a promising progressive candidate, has opted to change so little about the NYPD, which conducts massive city-wide surveillance, on the level of your "panopticon". Perhaps it's because he understands the benefits it provides to public safety, and is implicitly voting in confidence of its current level of oversight?

gowld 8mo ago

Flock is not a natural person. Flock has no rights.

try_the_bass 8mo ago
Companies have plenty of rights in the US.
TacticalCoder 8mo ago
As the owner of a moral person (a company), I disagree. There are even weirder stuff than companies being considered a "moral person". For example if a person speeds way too much in France (say more than 50 kilometers/hour above the speed limit on the highway, e.g. 180 km/h // 111 mph instead of the 130 km/h // 80 mph)... Well then that person gets arrested. And his driving license is confiscated on the spot. But here's the absolute crazy thing: even if the car belong to someone else, to a company, to a rental company... Doesn't matter: the French state consider that the car itself was complicit in the act. So the car is seized too (for 8 days if it doesn't belong to the person who was driving it and potentially much more if it does belong to the person driving it). Companies are persons and cars (I'm not even talking about self-driving cars) have rights and obligations. That's the world we live in.
- kevin_thibedeau 8mo ago
  "Company" is a generic collective noun. "Corporation" is the legal term directly referencing a constructed singular entity with a corpus/body to be treated like a natural person.

ceejayoz 8mo ago

> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. The idea that there's not a scale difference is, quite frankly, bogus.

AnIrishDuck 8mo ago
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you from a park bench in public and hundreds of thousands of clones of me watching you from every street corner in public is, quite frankly, bogus To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own.
- CamperBob2 8mo ago
  To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own. The central dogma of machine learning. Which Flock and its defenders know very well.
try_the_bass 8mo ago
Okay, can you articulate the difference? I don't disagree that quantity has a quality of it's own in some circumstances, but that's not an inherent property of "quantity".
- ceejayoz 8mo ago
  You peeking out your curtains at me is fine. It doesn’t scale. Everyone doing it 24/7 via their cameras and running it through AI analysis and providing it to the cops for $$$ is not.
  - try_the_bass 8mo ago
    What if I run my own cameras, my own local models, and my own analysis? All from the privacy of my own home... Is that okay? What if I recruit a few friends around my town to do the same, and we share data and findings? Is that also fine? What if I pay a bunch of people I don't know to collect this data for me, but do all the analysis myself? Where do you draw the line? Being able to concretely define a line here is something I've seen privacy proponents be utterly incapable of doing. Yet it's important to do so, because on one end of the spectrum is a set of protected liberties, and on the other is authoritarian dystopia. If you can't define some point at which freedom stops being freedom, you leave the door wide open to the kind of bullshit arguments we see any time "privacy in public" comes up: 100% feels, and 0% logic.

8note 8mo ago

this is still forcing flock on everyone. they could instead be limiting flock to private places. > This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. if you followed me everywhere and took pictures of me everywhwre i went outside from my door in the morning to my door in the evening, id want to get a restraining order on you as a stalker. this is stalking

try_the_bass 8mo ago
I agree, this is stalking. But again, this is not what Flock is doing. By this same logic, traffic cameras and CCTV surveillance are "stalking", which doesn't seem accurate?
- jmye 8mo ago
  The idea that a single CCTV feed is at all comparable to aggregatable Flock data is a deeply unserious position. I’m not clear why you think you can pretend that single cameras and a network of cameras are either similar or comparable, in this context? Or why traffic cameras aren’t essentially identical, if they’re used identically? I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt, but it feels very sea-liony and intentionally disingenuous.
  - try_the_bass 8mo ago
    [flagged]
- direwolf20 8mo ago
  It's accurate, they are stalking
- toss1 8mo ago
  Scenario A: A person or drone follows you and takes a sequence of photos of your activities (approximately) wherever you go in public. Scenario B: An array of cameras is installed (approximately) everywhere and takes a series of photos that include you, and the sequence of photos of your activities (approximately) wherever you go in public is assembled in real-time. You claim these are different. Other than details of the the technology, they are the same. The result is the stalker has a complete surveillance of your activities. Scenario B is even worse, as the stalker now has a complete surveillance of EVERYONE, for the same cost, with zero regard for legitimate legal suspicion. Stop being pedantic and ignoring reality

breakpointalpha 8mo ago

I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America. If this is what they thought was possible, why write the 4th Amendment? Unreasonable search and overbearing government was one of the key issues of the American Revolution.

AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
> I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America. They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety - Ben Frank Iirc he was a founder
- wredcoll 8mo ago
  Sorry, which part of the facial recognition cameras is liberty?
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    The part where you have the liberty to deploy your own network of them
    - wredcoll 8mo ago
      Just like how it's equally illegal for the rich or poor to sleep under a bridge
      - direwolf20 8mo ago
        Was the Flock guy rich before he did Flock?
- try_the_bass 8mo ago
  I know this is supposed to be some kind of "gotcha", but I'm legitimately curious: what essential liberty is someone giving up being surveilled in public?

dogleash 8mo ago

>> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE >> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled > As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. You're agreeing that he is forcing flock on people. Legality doesn't make it not-forced. Not needing consent is different from receiving consent.

try_the_bass 8mo ago
I mean, he's not. Police departments and other organizations who buy and install Flock cameras are the ones doing the "forcing". Again, I'm pretty anti-Flock, but place the blame where it's due and use good logic to support that.
- incompatible 8mo ago
  But Flock is happy to see them installed that way. They are collaborating and all responsible.
  - try_the_bass 8mo ago
    I don't understand this argument. How is Flock "collaborating" by selling their product? Sure they're happy their product is selling. How does that imply collaboration? I mean, you're welcome to buy an Apple Vision Pro, but you making poor decisions with your money doesn't make Apple responsible for that.
- direwolf20 8mo ago
  When a government department takes down Flock cameras why does Flock put new ones up?
  - try_the_bass 8mo ago
    I mean, that's a really good question. Do you have an answer? I certainly don't

phil21 8mo ago

> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. If you followed me around all day taking photographs of my every move for no other reason than you felt like it, I would very likely have recourse via stalking and harassment laws. There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology. If I'm interesting enough to get a warrant for surveillance of my activities - fair game. Private investigators operate under a set of reasonable limits and must be licensed in most (all?) states for this reason as well. It's quite obvious laws have simply not caught up with the state of modern technology that allows for the type of data collection and thus mass-surveillance that is now possible today. If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.

try_the_bass 8mo ago
But Flock doesn't "follow you around"? It's fixed location cameras. If you avoid the locations, you avoid the cameras, and thus the tracking. > There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology. I feel like it's telling that no one has yet taken this logic to court. I think that means that while there may be no difference to you there is a difference according to the law. This gets at your later point. Speaking of: > If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment. I think you're doing a subtle motte-and-bailey here. As far as I'm aware, Flock has strict retention policies, numbering in the low single-digit months (Google says 30 days "by default"). There is no "recorded indefinitely" here, which significantly changes the characteristics of the argument here. This is roughly on par with CCTV systems, to the best of my knowledge. I don't disagree that laws haven't caught up yet, but I also think a lot of the arguments against Flock are rife with hyperbolic arguments like this that do meaningfully misrepresent their model. I think this leads to bad solutioning, as a consequence. I'd much rather have good solutions here than bad ones, because ALPRs and other "surveillance technologies" do drive improvements in crime clearance rates/outcomes, so they shouldn't be banned--just better controlled/audited/overseen

praptak 8mo ago

There's a ton of difference between a random person noting my presence at a single point in space-time and a commercial entity tracking and storing my movements all the time. Being okay with people watching me in public does not imply being okay with someone aggregating the information about my whereabouts 24/7 even though it's "the same" information. Btw it's a fallacy similar to the one debunked in "what colour are your bits". The context matters, not just the abstract information.

mlyle 8mo ago
This is an unfortunate thing about a whole lot of legal precedent in the US. Courts made a pretty reasonable set of tradeoffs around the 4th amendment for search warrant vs. subpoena, police officers observing you, etc. During the 19th century. Unfortunately, modern data processing completely undermines a lot of the rationale about how reasonable and intrusive various things are. Before, cops couldn't follow and surveil everyone; blanket subpoenas to get millions of peoples' information weren't possible because the information wasn't concentrated in one entity's hands and compliance would have been impossible; etc.
- mrguyorama 8mo ago
  Actually the courts of the US have stated that mass dragnet surveillance is not allowed. I can't find the argument I'm thinking of but it referenced how the police can sit outside your house and surveil you, but physically cannot do that to everyone all the time, and that is an inherent limit to their ability to conduct surveillance that gives you some freedoms and that limit should be respected. Making a machine that can do exactly that is not something cops are allowed to do. The actual legal problem is that, the above does not apply to private companies. You have no fourth amendment rights from private companies. The constitution gives you no rights against companies. So the company does exactly what the police aren't allowed to do, and then sell access to the police. For some reason, this literal circumvention of their restrictions has been explicitly allowed. This is why Surveillance Capitalism is such a big deal. It is a direct circumvention of your explicit constitutional rights, and it just so happens to accomplish that because of the profit earned in the process. For a lot of assholes, this is the winingest of win-wins.

xnyan 8mo ago

>This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith. You can make an ideological argument that is the case, but not one based on fact and reality. *edited for spelling

try_the_bass 8mo ago
> The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith. I mean, in both cases, I'm being observed in public, with unknown intent. Until that observation becomes action of some kind, there is no difference to me. That tells me it's the concrete result of the surveillance that makes the difference, not whether or not it's an individual or a government doing the surveillance. As far as I can tell, if no one searches for my vehicle in Flock's database within 30 days of being observed, whether or not Flock observed me becomes moot. For the vast majority of individuals observed by Flock, there will not exist any permanent record of their movements. Now, all that is assuming they're above board with their retention policies, which they may well not be! I trust them about as far as I can throw them, but I haven't seen any evidence that they're lying about their retention practices, or that they're engaging in "dragnet-style" surveillance. I'm optimistic that any lawfare they engage in will out any bad behavior in that regard, thanks to discovery. This does pose an interesting question: is an individual with perfect memory, who regularly sees you in public and who could recall every detail of every time they've ever seen you, better or worse than Flock, which "forgets" you after 30 days?

xboxnolifes 8mo ago

> There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. > This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus. Might I interest you in the concepts of stalking and restraining orders?

try_the_bass 8mo ago
I'd be curious if one could file a restraining order against Flock, and if that would actually be enforceable? I mean, it might be a viable way to push back against them.

uywykjdskn 8mo ago

[dead]

bccdee 8mo ago

> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is bogus Okay: Just how long would you permit someone to follow you around with a camera, recording everything you do? The thing about a stranger watching you in public is that eventually you go somewhere else, and they can't watch you anymore. A surveillance organization like Flock, however, is waiting for you wherever you go. In this sense they're much more like a stalker following you around than a stranger who happens to see you. This analogy bears out in practice: Cops have used Flock data to stalk their exes.¹ [1]: https://www.kwch.com/2022/10/31/kechi-police-lieutenant-arrested-using-police-technology-stalk-wife/ https://www.kwch.com/2022/10/31/kechi-police-lieutenant-arre...

try_the_bass 8mo ago
> Okay: Just how long would you permit someone to follow you around with a camera, recording everything you do? Probably not long. I might also make it clear I'm not a fan, but at the end of the day, they're generally within their rights to record me in public. Sucks, but not much I can do. > The thing about a stranger watching you in public is that eventually you go somewhere else, and they can't watch you anymore. A surveillance organization like Flock, however, is waiting for you wherever you go. In this sense they're much more like a stalker following you around than a stranger who happens to see you. I mean, I don't buy this argument, because a stranger can legally follow me to all the same places where Flock is present. I mean, surely if I get into a car and drive away, they can get into a car and follow me. So long as we're both in public roads, they're within their rights to do so? Granted, if they keep it up long enough, I can probably file charges for stalking. Perhaps the same can be done against Flock? Hell, this would even be a situation where Flock would be useful: proving that someone was following me around all day, thus supporting my bid for a restraining order or something. > This analogy bears out in practice: Cops have used Flock data to stalk their exes.¹ Indeed, and this is where oversight, strict rules around usage and retention, and effective penalties for violations are needed. Banning Flock is not the only solution! I mean, I would be in favor of banning Flock specifically (because they've demonstrated a willingness to act in bad faith), but I would not support a ban of ALPRs entirely. They do provide benefits, and coupled with the right rules, can be a net benefit to society.

toss1 8mo ago

>>everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting If you want to manually observe me in public, as in WITH A HUMAN PERSON'S LIVING EYEBALLS, go right ahead. Even if you want to use a manually-operated still or video camera and microphone, one device per person, go ahead. Or even a radar gun operated by a human, one observer with one device. But if you start littering the entire planet with cameras and create a panopticon, even if it is absolutely in public space, that is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, and absolutely infringing on any reasonable concept of public/private space! Consider simple speeding. An ordinary person who usually follows speed limits will rarely get stopped and fined, even if they occasionally exceed a limit in an emergency or when doing the safest thing in dense traffic that is over the speed limit, match the speed of traffic. But with universal surveillance, even watching 100% in public spaces, that person in an emergency could get dozens of tickets for minor infractions. This is setting up Cardinal Richlieu's ideal tyranny: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." With a panopticon of all public spaces, any petty tyrant can find enough evidence in six minutes to imprison anyone. [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu

try_the_bass 8mo ago
> This is setting up Cardinal Richlieu's ideal tyranny: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." It's a good thing, then, that most criminal convictions require a jury of our peers, and not just the word of a tyrant. And that appeals exist, etc etc. > With a panopticon of all public spaces, any petty tyrant can find enough evidence in six minutes to imprison anyone. This is a blatant strawman. Said "panopticon" already exists in major areas, and this kind of abuse of power still rarely happens. It's possible to have increased surveillance come with stricter rules and increased oversight, you know. For example, it's pretty telling that Mandani, largely seen as a promising progressive candidate, has opted to change so little about the NYPD, which conducts massive city-wide surveillance, on the level of your "panopticon". Perhaps it's because he understands the benefits it provides to public safety, and is implicitly voting in confidence of its current level of oversight?